


The most royal of methods

by SkyEventide



Category: Original Work
Genre: (but no magic), Abuse of Loyalty, Assassination, Emotional Manipulation, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Multi, Ordered To Do Things Against Principles, Political Polyamory, Politics, Power Imbalance, Violating Moral Principles For A Loved One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 20:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyEventide/pseuds/SkyEventide
Summary: Nicola is Chancellor of Etruria. In the middle of the night, he wakes up to a dagger ready to strike. But it doesn't, and he is saved. An assassination attempt for a ruler may be nothing exceptional, but that this one failed and, most importantly, the identity of the assassin... definitely are. They have a history, the would-be-killer and he, and there's yet ways to make use of it.





	The most royal of methods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HotGoatCheese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HotGoatCheese/gifts).

> Though this work doesn't fall under any of the official AO3 warnings (and thus no archive warnings apply), it was written for the Darkest Night 2019, a darkfics exchange, so please do heed that and the contents listed in the tags. It may actually be tamer than you expect, but your mileage may vary!

The man resting among the silks is the Chancellor Nicola of Etruria.

He sleeps alone, and peacefully, wrapped in sheets and in an embroidered undergarment. He sleeps unaware.

The honey brown of his hair and of the neat beard is washed out by the milky, foggy moonlight. Leaning over his target, Diego can even make out the fine lines that have crept upon the features he remembered fresh and youthful.

The man resting among the silks is a man Diego knows; a man he has known for a long time, and has known well.

A gust of breeze blows in from the window at his back, a warm summery breeze. Perhaps it’s that, perhaps it’s the shadow that Diego casts on the sleeping man, perhaps an aristocratic instinct of survival – but the Chancellor wakes up.

Nicola’s eyes focus.

It’s but a moment.

The dagger Diego holds would slash across his throat. The blood spilling, pooling over the sheets in a large stain, the Chancellor gargling as he chokes on it. All a familiar sight, and not a sound made, a clean job.

But Diego looks into the man’s wide eyes and his dagger falls on the mattress, his grip faltering fatally.

The Chancellor knows enough of self-preservation. Wide awake, he steals the abandoned dagger for himself – and yells for his guards.

Diego pays no mind to the door bursting open.

Rather, he grabs Nicola’s wrist before the weapon can be plunged into his stomach. Diego twists the arm, pulls him away from and down the bed, not to hurt Nicola, but to prevent him from hurting him back. The covers wind around their bodies, tangled up.

The guards’ steps are loud, but Diego doesn’t turn.

If this must be his death, well, then so be it.

*

Short of breath and shaking, Nicola stares at the assassin who has fallen over him. His guard has hit the man on his head, with the hilt of the sword – more soldiers pour into his bedroom now, they grab the stranger by the grey clothing, a dark grey, the colour that best disappears in the night’s shadows – they pull him up, they pat the unconscious body in search for weapons.

Nicola holds the blade still, tightly, his knuckles white.

He’s pulled up, carefully, by the armpits, his feet stumble in the twined covers.

_My _Lord, they call. _My Lord, are you harmed—_

He is not. Slowly, they uncurl his fingers from the blade’s hilt, take it away from his hand.

Nicola shudders. Then focuses.

The shock wears off like golden lean make-up after a party, washes away as the fumes of wine after a cold bath.

He turns to his guard captain and snaps, « Go to my wife _at once_. »

There’s a second where, perhaps, the awareness of their priority flares over his men’s expression. Then they dart away, their steps loud through the door and in the corridor. Nicola stares at the gaping hole of his bedroom’s entrance, wholly open, framed by the carven single block of marble of the architrave. The terracotta under his naked feet is warming up.

He looks towards the other guards, busy with disarming the assassin.

This one, Nicola thinks with stark clarity, has come the closest to killing him. The silhouette, blacker against black, loomed over him; the weapon lingered above his body. The split second between his wakening and the reaction…

The guards pull away the grey shawl that covered half of the assassin’s face. The man’s hair is cut very short, the strong browbone casts a shadow over his eyes.

This man, slowly stripped of the tools of his deadly art, wears a familiar face.

Thin lips, a dimple in his cheek.

Nicola sucks his breath in, recognition striking him as lighting.

*

Dawn peeks through white clouds; its glow, from timid first breath of the sun, soon comes to hurt the eyes.

Nicola holds a cotton blanket wrapped tight around his body, cocooned in it as he waits on his chaise longue for the morning to unfurl entirely. The tension in his curled toes and tightened fingers, he suspects, is born of lingering tautness rather than cold.

He watches the breeze move the vines climbing up the terrace’s pergola.

« Nicola. »

His wife’s voice.

He turns slightly, watching her come in, a shawl over her shoulders, her hair still undone. He raises a brow, a silent query about her early rising.

« Rather hard to sleep », she points out, « after having been woken up in the middle of the night because assassins might be afoot. »

« Sleepless is better than dead », he replies mildly, looking away towards the roofs that slowly regain their reddish colours.

« Indeed. » Eloiza walks to the parapet and sits on it, squinting at the stark profile of the mountains, against the sun. « Who sent him, do you know? »

« Not for certain, but I can make a very informed guess. My sister, or her husband, but most likely both of them jointly. »

Eloiza looks at him, one could almost spot her thoughts as they tangle into complicated designs, like sailor knots. « And did he reveal that? The intruder? »

Nicola shakes his head. He gathers his own memories, walks through them as he’d flip the pages of a book, the folders of bureaucracy: always the same, and yet one could hope to find a different line, a scene that changes the course of the narrative.

« He’s locked up, no one has spoken with him yet. But I mean to. »

« _You_ mean to? »

Nicola now nods, looking away, some indistinct horizon line. « I know him. »

He says it slowly, that she may understand that he knows not merely the assassin, but the man himself. Eloiza sniffs out, like a hound, the buried story.

« You know him », she repeats, an expectation in her tone.

It’s a good thing Nicola didn’t mean to hide the story from her. He nods again. « Yes. I do know him. He worked for my family, when I was a young man. When _he _was a young man. » A pause, Nicola slides a hand out from under the light blanket and rubs at his beard. He catches himself frowning. « I suppose he still works for them, on my sister’s side. »

Eloiza doesn’t hide her surprised scepticism. « So I am to understand that they sent to kill you someone who _knows you_, I suspect well enough. I may not think highly of them, but they’ve certainly proven themselves smarter than that. »

Nicola’s lips twitch in a slight smile. He recalls the subterfuge of secret meetings, and many things unspoken. « They weren’t aware of it. Not then, and I imagine not now either. We were lovers, you see », he says, giving away that little piece of his younger self.

There’s a silence. Her eyes narrow attentively. « Is that why you’re alive? From what you told me tonight about it… »

« I suppose so », Nicola answers quietly. The sun has risen higher and he feels the beginning of a headache creeping up on him, just above his eyebrows. « I hadn’t seen him in long years. But perhaps so. Like I said, I mean to speak with him. »

Eloiza hums, her mouth pressed down, her forehead knitting in another as she unwinds another web of thoughts. « You should send a message to the Parliament. That you will be late. »

Nicola breathes out a long sigh. « I will get to that too. »

*

Nicola’s house is, first and foremost, a _house_. There are no prisons, no dungeons, and because of this unfortunate show of humanity Diego has been locked up in the cellar.

Nicola descends the old stone steps, moulded and polished by the passing of so many feet through the decades, accompanied by guards, one in front of him, the other at his back. The one standing at the bottom of the stairs turns a large key in a larger, rusty keyhole, and opens the door.

Entering the cellar, they light up lanterns for him.

At the very bottom of the rows of barrels, large and looming, chained up to a metallic ring, is Diego. He’s been stripped of the outer layer of his clothing, of his boots, and of every other little thing that could reasonably hide a weapon or other tool. His head is bowed down.

The sight of the battered, chained man gives Nicola a strange and delicate pang of guilt.

He takes a breath and turns to the guards. « Wait just outside. »

As they leave, the sound of the armour accompanying each step, Nicola walks to the bottom of the cellar, breathing in the humid scent of underground and of stored wine. He stops a few steps away of the prisoner who was his lover.

« Diego », he calls.

As if breaking an enchantment, Diego moves in the dim light that softens all edges but casts deep shadows. Slowly, he lifts his head and opens his eyes, and, when he does, Nicola finds no anger in his expression, no surprise, not even pain; only a curious sort of tiredness.

Diego smiles very faintly. « It’s been a while. »

The voice is nearly the same. Nicola nods. « Indeed. »

« I assume I was kept alive for an interrogation? »

« Normally, that would be the procedure. In this case… I don’t think there is the need for one, is there? Or perhaps… not the usual sort. »

The pause that follows drags on.

Twenty years ago, Nicola thought the young man in his father’s employ a handyman, a courier of sorts. One who would come to their villa to deliver things and messages, and carry out his parents’ word. Diego had charmed him with the erratic carelessness of a chaffinch.

And there’s something of that still in the way his mouth pulls to the side and deepens the dimple in his cheek. « Yes, normally I imagine the Chancellor wouldn’t carry out the interrogation personally. »

Nicola looks away, very briefly, towards at the brass spigot at the bottom of the ample barrel at his right. « My sister, I suppose? », he asks, cutting to the chase.

Diego answers very quietly, after a breath: « And your brother-in-law. »

Another pause. He wets his lips, narrowing his eyes as his mind tries to find something specific, in his memory, looking for a clue that could assure him that, yes,_ you’ve always known_. « I think… what is really pressing me, what I truly want to ask… is if you were always _this_, always an assassin, in their employment. »

Diego’s mouth twitches, as if it were trying to smile without permission, but were stopped by a bitter mood. He doesn’t meet Nicola’s eyes. « Yes », he answers, sighing. « I was. »

Nicola snorts very faintly and _does _smile. « I was very naïve, wasn’t I? » And he discovers, as he says it, that the continued lie doesn’t hurt him, doesn’t even shock him – whatever he feels, below the outer layers of himself, is on behalf of the young man he was, not the one he is.

Diego doesn’t answer. His eyes stay on the slightly dusty tuff pavement of the cellar, barely focused. Nicola observes the small wrinkle between the other man’s brows. Regret? Exhaustion? It’s an expression he couldn’t name.

Raising a brow, his voice tilting up like in a true and surprised enquiry, Nicola asks, « Why am I alive, Diego? We haven’t seen each other in about two decades, since the time I left my parents’ house. I’d think that a long enough time to get over… whatever it is that we had. »

« Maybe you had that luxury », Diego murmurs. « I hope you had it. But we led rather different lives, Chancellor. »

Nicola looks at the restraints, biting into the skin around the wrists and arms, at the halo of encrusted blood in Diego’s hair cropped close to his scalp, at the naked feet, the soles now dirtied, and thinks of the lie he used to believe about this chained man.

They led different lives indeed.

He rubs at his beard, over his cheek. « I’ll send you a doctor », he says, then turns to step away.

*

The first floor of the Public Palace was once used for large banquets and feasts.

Now the room houses wooden terraces and a pulpit as that of a tribunal. Nicola climbs the open flights of stairs hanging from the side of the courtyard with intent and a decisive step, the burgundy cape of his office pinned to his chest and shoulder. The senators notice him, interrupt conversation, get ready to enter the hall.

Larthia waits on a landing, the very last before the arched entrance to the Parliament’s room. Her bejewelled hands are wrapped tightly in front of her belly, and something in her small frame betrays a certain impatience.

« Did you already start the session? », Nicola asks, looking up at her.

« It’s been on hold all morning », she chirps, « like you asked in your message. What was the delay for? »

He gives a quick look to the chamberlain as he passes her. « Assassination », he says quietly. « Obviously failed. »

*

It is he, Larthia, and his wife, sitting in the walled garden of his house. Or rather, Nicola is sitting, his wife leans against the stone well, her arms crossed, and Chamberlain Larthia paces around, restless as the chirping birds.

« You _cannot _», she says, in a shrill voice, « bring them to trial. It would be a farce. Even assuming that the _two _elected judges will be on your side, a jury of peers would _never_ condemn the last descendants of the old royals. Not even if the prosecution is a member of the same family. »

Nicola smiles slightly. « I know most of our peers like my sister more than they will ever like me, but I know everyone on the jury. I could… », he sighs, half-heartedly, « I can always buy them. »

« Oh, lovely », Larthia replies, rolling her eyes, « from one farce to another. »

« Even so », Eloiza interjects, setting her crystal glass of lemon juice down on the well’s flat cover, « I doubt we can afford it. That is five sitting judges, the two electives excluded. Five heavy debts with five different houses. I don’t recommend it. »

Larthia sniffs with a touch of annoyance. « Frankly, I don’t even know why we voted the juries to be that way. »

« It was the only way it would get approved. » Nicola looks away, towards the wall, where ivy clings and spreads, and the top of it, where a spiked fence makes a climb over to either side exceedingly difficult; he wonders how Diego managed it.

After a moment, his wife suggests, « Accuse them publicly, in the Parliament. Have the assembly issue their arrest as high treason. »

Nicola breathes in, deeply. « If I do that, their loyalists would rally at their side and not approve it. Most of the nobility wouldn’t, unless I spend some time building it up… But with the rate at which reforms are requested and pushed for, I don’t think I have the luxury of playing the long game. » He gestures slowly with his hand. « moderates and republicans, and possibly the guilds, would require that we apply the laws… which leads us back to the trial. In all this, syndicates and radicals will argue that the trial would be rigged, that I shouldn’t even be Chancellor to begin with on account of my heritage… And all I see is another revolt on our hands. I don’t know what would come after that. »

Eloiza takes her glass, sips, her eyes shine over its brim. When she sets it down again, she’s nearly smirking. « Have your guard arrest your sister’s loyalists when they protest on her behalf, with the same charge of high treason. The rest will fall into line. »

Nicola breaks into a chuckle. « That is certainly doable, thought I’m afraid it counts as a coup. »

« My dears. »

They turn. Larthia’s smile is pressed down so tightly that it could snap at any moment, like a twig.

« Try not to say these things right in front of the actual Assembly Chamberlain, _please_. »

He raises a hand, his palm towards her, a universal pacifying gesture. « I don’t mean to stage a coup, Larthia. I do have a solution, but… I was hoping you could suggest something different. »

He notices his wife’s slight smile, sharp and final. If he knows her at all, his solution was hers, and possibly has been hers since the guards woke her up that night.

« Assassination », he continues mildly, « shall be met with its own like. Death must be delivered in return, as it is in my right. »

« Well », Larthia exclaims, somewhat high-pitched, « rather ironic of you that you should retaliate with the most royal of methods. Moderates factions won’t approve it. I don’t entirely either, for that matter. »

« They don’t need to know », Eloiza replies, walking to the small table and finally sitting by it, sprawling on the cushions that soften the metallic curls of the chair. « And I guarantee you that syndicates won’t care one bit. They’d do it themselves, if they could. »

Nicola wets his lips, his thoughts swimming idly as they arrange themselves into a course of action. He observes a raven pecking away at the cherries on their tree. « I helped with delivering a proper government, if imperfect as it is », he says, pensively. « I promise I’ll deliver you a republic too. Whatever it takes. »

*

The guards come after the doctor, and after a lunch and a dinner. Diego counted time with his hunger and the meals that quelled it: he judges that, when the armoured men undo his chains to lift him up and bind him with new shackles, it should be around sunset, and not long after.

He is led up the stairs. He says no word, makes no protest, looks down at where his feet step, and perhaps this meekness guarantees him a decent treatment. No shoving of sorts (for which he is thankful – his bandaged head still hurts). Or perhaps it’s the orders.

He thinks cynically about his destination.

A proper prison. Maybe death.

This cynicism allows him to be surprised, when he’s brought deeper into the house, up more stairs, through tastefully decorated corridors, the white walls, the wooden furniture, the marble and terracotta floors.

At last, they exit on a terrace. It overlooks the garden, the furniture is of painted metal and full of pillows, vases hold geranium plants and vines wrap around the balustrade.

It is in fact sunset. Rich reds give in to dusk and lanterns already light up the surroundings, and Nicola’s face.

Nicola sits at a small table. He’s poised, has a cup of something in front of him, wears comfortable house clothes. When Nicola looks up, Diego finds his expression so very calm that it’s quite hard to read – and must lower his own eyes.

« Thank you, go back inside », Nicola says, dismissing the guards.

And then he gestures, towards the chair right in front of him.

Diego takes a breath. His hands are not free, which he finds sensible, but the invitation, the quietness of the evening… they open sceneries whose ending he cannot predict. Slowly, finding it easier to simply obey, he sits down.

« I wonder », Nicola begins, looking away, beyond the balustrade, « how you managed to climb the garden wall. I thought the spikes would make it near impossible. »

Diego smiles slightly. He cannot help it. « They do. I didn’t climb it. » And, as Nicola raises a brow at him, he explains, « I came from the window in your bedroom, climbing the house’s external wall. »

« I’d think that impossible too. »

« Not many could. »

Another pause. The confession, he supposes, gives away his skill. His aptitude for an art of death that’s falling out of favour, even out of use as civilisation advances. The increasing pointlessness of his job maybe only heightens that of the lie – of letting Nicola believe, all this while, that he was something else, something harmless.

He presses his lips together. « I’d have thought to be dead, by now. »

Nicola appears, to his credit, genuinely surprised. « Dead? »

Diego shrugs. « Executed, for an attempt on your life. »

« Ah. But you didn’t kill me, Diego. You had a chance. I already asked you why I am alive, but regardless of the answer, I do believe I should at least repay you with your own life, though perhaps not freedom. Yet. »

Diego blinks. Nicola’s face, aged and far graver than how he remembered it, and perhaps far more poised too, has something of an openness to it; a sort of curiosity.

He takes a deep breath. « You want to know why? »

Nicola tilts his head slightly. « I want to know if it was a last-minute decision. »

That gives Diego pause. He brings to mind the memory of him kneeling as he was instructed by Nicola’s relatives, the cold of the marble. He exhales. « No », he confesses quietly. « It wasn’t. »

« So I am to understand that you came here to kill me, knowing that you wouldn’t. »

Diego wets his lips. A chuckle buzzes in his chest and finds its way to his mouth, though it loses much of its strength; it’s barely a snort. « I came _because _I knew I wouldn’t. »

Silence follows, slightly unnerving. Diego plucks little pieces of himself and puts them on the table between them, out in the open, like he’s never done in a long time, or perhaps ever before. He’s unsure if it’s the freedom that comes from a gap of two decades since they last spoke, or a form of personal apology, an apology for a long secrecy.

Nicola nods slightly. « …I see. »

Diego studies the face of the man he once loved.

Once? Maybe still loves.

Not the same thing, of course, not any longer. But it’s been hard, incredibly hard not to cling to the memory.

« I suppose », Nicola continues, « that you won’t be able to go back to my sister’s estate. »

Diego gives him an ironic half smile. « No. Of course not. They’ll realise soon enough that I didn’t… do what I came to do. They might assume me dead. »

Nicola wets his lips and hums, pensively. When their eyes meet, he’s even smiling faintly. « You’ll stay, for now », he says. « I’ll find some place for you that isn’t the cellar. »

Diego chuckles, but the small laugh soon fades. « Be aware that they’ll try again. It shouldn’t be my place to warn you about that, but you should know. »

As Nicola leans back, against the pillow and the wrought iron curls of his chair’s design, he appears entirely calm, entirely at ease. « I’m aware. But thank you for the warning, nonetheless. »

There’s another pause. Diego can’t offer much else, as it feels that speaking more of things that refuse to be put into words would be like openly bleeding. He couldn’t say why Nicola is silent too, but perhaps, well, just perhaps it’s for the same reason.

Then Nicola takes a deep breath, and, with a few brief words, the guards walk back out on the terrace, to escort Diego away.

*

It did happen again, but not where Diego could see.

He is moved to a small room on the ground floor, the sort used by the staff. He would think Nicola a madman for trusting this easily, but the room is still locked and his manacles are not removed. So, caution, but with a touch of regard.

He’ll live with it.

So, next time he sees Nicola, it is a few days later. And it has happened again.

Nicola sits in his living room, his arm has been bandaged, patched up, and he looks pale in an unnatural way. It takes nothing for Diego to know.

« Did you take an antidote? »

It is Nicola’s wife who answers, the Lady Eloiza. « Of course he has », she snaps as she slowly paces the room in large circles, her arms crossed.

« Several », Nicola adds quietly.

And then there’s silence, and Diego sits perched on a small sofa, the guards surround them entirely. Nicola’s eyes seem unfocused, surrounded by this livid halo, as if he’d been punched in both, and it’s hard to tell whether he’s keeping his cool or is still a little too shaken and weakened.

Even more quietly, Diego adds, « I warned you. »

« What was the point », Eloiza says, « of warning us about something we already damn well knew? »

« My dear, please », Nicola murmurs, and maybe it’s the faintness of the voice that makes her hold back whatever else she had to say.

Diego doesn’t open his mouth. He has learnt, a very long time ago, when to keep silent – and even if he _had _anything to say, now… the weight not unlike guilt that he’s been nursing in his chest keeps all words down like a sinker.

« I lost two guards », Nicola continues, slowly. « I delayed my… retaliation on account of needing to find the right means. Eloiza has suggested that I offer you full freedom, a full pardon if you will, in exchange for becoming those means. »

Diego breathes out.

He is not in the position to refuse, and in fact has no reason to. He looks up, almost leans in. « …I can do that. »

Nicola, not without a grave look first directed at a vague middle distance and then at his wife, nods. « Then I’ll see you later again. »

*

That evening, his manacles are removed.

Diego watches the key turn into the metal, crosses the guard’s eyes as the woman pulls the iron shackles away from his wrists, and grins at her for half a second. She is not impressed, but he doesn’t mind.

He is brought to Nicola’s bedroom, the one he saw the very first night, and left surprisingly alone. That is, alone except for the man lying on the bed, with a wet cloth over his forehead. It’s almost as he’s seen him when he came to kill him, only that now Nicola is paler, and awake.

Diego breathes in. « How do you feel? », he asks, without coming closer.

« I believe I am sweating it off. »

There’s a sheen on Nicola’s face. Diego rubs at his wrists, but still doesn’t approach; tiredness settles on his shoulders, on his soul. He breathes out. « How can I serve you, then? »

Nicola looks to the side, turning his head on the pillow. « Not so fast, Diego. Not so fast. »

He gestures, acquiescing. « At your leisure. »

A sigh comes from his old lover. Nicola raises a hand and gestures, if weakly, towards a wicker chair, left there perhaps by the doctor, perhaps by his wife. « Come, sit here », he invites.

Diego doesn’t immediately move. As if coming too close breached some sort of limit, a line between things he allowed himself to hope and things long buried; it takes him a moment before his feet bring him to that chair, before he can sit beside the bed where he almost killed the Chancellor. No, not almost. The privilege of hindsight tells him that it was never truly an option.

So he sits.

« This will be a long conversation », Nicola says.

Diego can’t help a little snort. « Will it? »

« My, yes. » The following laugh is weak, maybe even ironic. « We haven’t quite discussed the part where, the last time I had seen you, I was twenty-something and left my house entirely. »

Diego recalls it very well. The youngest son leaves for the armies without permission for political differences with his family, one step from disowning his own name – and then returns preaching for a republic, years later, married to the daughter of a merchant and ready to step into Parliament. The youngest son who was his lover, the youngest son to whom he lied about his role in that household, his real occupation – who didn’t doubt him or his words and looked at him as if he were the embodiment of freedom.

« I am sorry », Nicola continues quietly, « for never contacting you again. And for simply leaving, I suppose. I’m certain you are aware that I had to. »

« I am sorry for the lie. But… it may have been for the better that you didn’t return. »

« How so? »

« The lie was better », Diego says, his eyes drifting towards the corner of the room. He recalls himself posing as an errand boy and smiles sideways, a little bitterly. « One good thing that I got to have, and keep. »

In the silence that follows, Nicola shifts his weight and, slowly, carefully, sits up. He swings his naked feet over the edge of the bed and stays there, pale and handsome, and Diego must look away, again.

« Do you think », Nicola asks, « that I wouldn’t have stayed with you, had I known the truth? »

Diego snorts, shaking his head. The reaction is honest, his own interrupted little laugh tugging at something, pulling it away like one would pull at flayed skin. « Back then? No, I don’t think so. »

Nicola reaches for his night table. He opens a drawer with a deliberate carefulness and takes out… Ah. That is the dagger, the one Diego recognises as his, that he wielded that night. Nicola turns it in his elegant hands, then points at Diego with it. « And now? », he whispers. « Do you think the same now? »

Diego breathes in, his eyes transfixed by the dagger snap up to stare at Nicola. His old lover appears calm, his prompting gentle.

Nicola speaks again before he can answer his question. « I am not asking you to do this as reparations for… breaking into my house. Twenty years, Diego, are a long time – but here I am, alive. Whatever your full reasons, and I will not ask them… I am not about to tell you to leave. You’ll stay, after this. And if you will kill at my bidding, then do it for me. »

They are different men. Diego knows that very well like he knows disillusionment. But his breath, as he sighs out, shakes nonetheless.

« I am sure », he answers, with a tilt in his voice that attempts humour and doesn’t quite manage the right pitch, « that I can perform my job well without any need for encouragement. »

Nicola shakes his head lightly, as if tired. « What I must ask you, Diego… » A pause, then he looks up, his eyes wildly blue. « With my sister’s family gone, I am the last heir. Anyone else with a claim to our defunct crown will either fight their own faction, or be forced to accept my sole leadership, as Chancellor. As the sole heir, I can officially dismantle what is left of… our old institutions. »

Leaning in, Nicola takes his hand. Another shudder. The dagger is gently placed on his palm, as if it were a gift.

Nicola makes his fingers curl over the handle. « But I must be the only one left. »

…Ah.

Diego does not look up. « All of them », he says, in quiet understanding of the request made of him. « Even your niece and nephew? »

« …Yes. Even them. »

« Your grandmother too, I suppose. »

« Her too. »

Diego breathes out. He looks up, into the blue eyes, and shivers as if he were the one with poison still in his body. « For you. » Half a statement, with half a question buried within.

Nicola nods slightly, solemnly, there’s almost an apology. « You may refuse », he says.

And Diego stares at the pale, pale face, that slight layer of sweat. He holds the blade more tightly, resting it over his legs. One good thing, he thinks, one good thing that he kept locked up in himself when there was little left.

So he nods and, with a wisp of voice, answers: « I’ll return soon. »

*

Diego knows the villa very well. He has spent his life in the house of his employers, Nicola’s family.

He knows the nooks, the entryways, the corridors, the window placements, the guard movements. He doesn’t need to spend time studying it, studying when and where to break in from, the escape routes, or where everyone sleeps.

He knows it well.

He knows it so well that, when he swings over the windowsill on the second floor, landing quietly on the marble pavement, no one has yet noticed him.

The patterns of the tiles are familiar. Once, as a young man, he always tried to not step on their edges, dancing and hopping to avoid them. Those habits are long lost. 

There are two bodies sleeping in the large bed, that of Nicola’s sister and that of her husband. He’s known Velia for as long as he’s known Nicola, and they have the same golden-brown hair, the same nose. The same blood. But she never looked his way, not in his youth, not in adulthood, nor has her husband.

It is easier to kill those you don’t _know_. Those you don’t love.

He has only ever heard their voices to take orders from them. It feels like cutting off a ballast, the rope tying it to his foot severed once and for all.

A clean job. Their throats lie open, the blood gushes forth. They gurgle, but cannot speak a word, and Diego’s face is covered by his grey shawl, tightly wrapped. They don’t get the luxury of seeing him, he gets no satisfaction from killing them; it’s work, not a vengeance.

Their blue blood had already turned red a long while ago.

Killing the old grandmother is not terribly hard. He makes it less bloody for her, as she is weaker, frail. Breaking her neck is not difficult. She goes limp in his hands, and he sets her down in her bed again, the skinny body sinking into the bed.

He never exchanged a word with her, not even for orders. She never cared to.

It’s the deep hours of the night when he comes in the children’s room.

Diego stops walking, for a few seconds stops even breathing. The heels of his boots, wrapped in cloth, do not make a sound.

As he approaches, he does so slowly, swallowing his saliva.

The girl sleeps peacefully, though her breath wheezes slightly. He closes his eyes.

He has taken so very many lives, he thinks; two, three decades ago, when games of power were most often played out like this, instead of through debates in an assembly. Not so far in the past, and yet another time.

He takes a deep breath; all his blades are sheathed – his hand slides under the small sleeping head.

Diego had come to Nicola’s house knowing that he wouldn’t do what he’d been sent to do; he’s come to this house knowing that he would.

Afterwards, he sits on the floor by the window for a little while, aware of the danger of lingering, and yet busy with staring at his own feet, his own legs, crossed under him. He must believe, with an excruciating weight on his ribcage, that bringing this last deed to completion was worth it. He must.

So, in the dusty darkness of the room, he eventually pushes himself back to his feet and, with the mechanical smoothness of experience, prepares himself to descend from the window and walk back to Nicola’s house, to Nicola himself, before dawn begins spreading quietly in the sky.

*

Nicola doesn’t go to the Public Palace the following morning. He sends a message, that he feels ill, and they are welcome to proceed without him – and another smaller note, for Larthia only, that might as well expect sudden news and that, should they come, she ought not to be alarmed by their nature.

That night, in the small hours, a servant had woken him up.

Nicola had startled, his heartbeat spiking to a mad rhythm. But, assessed that he was surrounded by his own people, he had swallowed, wrangling his self-control back into place.

« Mister Diego has returned, my lord », his servant had murmured. « He has gone to sleep and has requested that I inform you of the positive outcome of his duty. »

Left to his solitude again, he’d been barely able to sleep, shaken by cold sweats, alternating between a clenching stomach, slightly nauseous, and an unbearable sense of utter relief.

He has Diego called into his rooms in the late morning.

Nicola waits for him at his desk, still feeling weak, but no longer feverish for the poison and the antidotes’ effects. He has brushed his hair, worn comfortable white linens, trimmed his beard properly. The world, he knows, turns a little differently today; the sun shines on a slightly different Etruria.

When Diego walks in, he seems different too: he is tired, a touch of stubble covers his jaw as he has not shaven. He doesn’t smile. Whatever sheen of youth he still had, Nicola can no longer find it.

Diego smiles so very faintly. « It’s done », he repeats, unnecessarily.

Nicola nods slowly and, a hand on his oak desk, helps himself on his feet and walks towards Diego. Like the surface tension of water, there is a moment where something bends between them, stretching invisible. It breaks when Nicola places both his hands on Diego’s wide shoulders.

He could thank him right then. He doesn’t, not yet. His hands slide with a careful attentiveness towards Diego’s neck, and up, towards his jaw. Diego seems to shiver visibly as Nicola reacquaints himself with a body and a soul he once knew well, or believed to know. There’s no refusal on Diego’s side, even though he closes his eyes, even though he frowns slightly.

It’s then, and only then, that Nicola breaths out, and is almost surprised to discover that he too is shivering. « Thank you. »

He watches Diego’s throat bob, he watches him exhale, and finally nod. « You’ve got one of the best, Chancellor. »

Hearing his title gives Nicola pause. His thumb runs slowly down the other man’s jaw.

He’s not surprised that Diego reacts: indeed, he is looking to see what that reaction is, and it is something between a tension and another shudder. His hands, then, fall gently to Diego’s shoulders again. « Come sit with me », he says, and carefully leads Diego to a sofa under his study’s window.

Sitting together, Nicola doesn’t put distance between them; he doesn’t let Diego sit on the edge, perched as if ready to stand at any moment; he doesn’t let it be formal, cold. He remains close and it is with a deep care that he makes Diego turn towards him again, with a faint pull of his hands. A care for a soul that might be all his, that perhaps he’s had throughout these years, unknowingly.

Diego stares at him, his eyes a little large and wondering.

Curious, Nicola thinks, how as a young man it was _he _who could never have doubted of Diego’s word and intentions; how now it feels to him as if, exactly like a tamed hawk, Diego would wear a hood of leather and still eat from his hand.

Suddenly, Diego speaks. « Your lady wife… »

« We have our arrangements, she and I », he answers, with a small smile. « Don’t worry about it. »

Perhaps Diego meant something else, but it hardly matters. The reply to his unfinished sentence makes him fall silent.

In this stunned mood, Nicola draws him close (and Diego does slide towards him, without resistance), until eventually he is embracing him. Diego is silent, but rests in his arms as a doll would, and Nicola calls to memory their shared knowledge of each other: their bodies have aged too.

« Do you plan to stay? », he murmurs.

Diego huffs lightly. « I lack anything that could be called a plan, at the moment. »

« You may. I might be in need of your services again. This fight isn’t quite over yet. » His hand caresses the very short hair. There’s a scar on the back, close to the nape – a wound there could kill. « But not now. Now, you should rest. »

« I’m almost always ready. »

Nicola smiles. It’s a quiet smile, as he looks outside the window, towards the bright blue sky. « Of course. I do have one of the best, don’t I? »

*

Diego sleeps in his bed, that night. He suspects it will be the case for many nights to come, as Diego has no other employer now, virtually no other house now that he has emptied out his old living place of all its inhabitants.

Nicola, the next morning, prepares himself with a deliberate slowness. He has the red cloak of his office wrapped around his shoulders and pinned there, he combs his hair, dons his boots and cracks his ankles in them.

As he arranges his clothing, he could very well rearrange the government of Etruria.

Eloiza is in the living room, reading letters, sipping a red fruit juice. She eyes him.

« Done as we discussed », Nicola says as he passes her. « I believe he will stay in our service. »

« You mean yours », she says, with a touch of amusement in her voice.

« Quite the same thing. Now… the guilds and syndicates answered you? »

She lifts the one piece of paper she was reading, the others spread on the table. « I am going through them. »

Nicola nods. It is coming together. With enough luck, monarchy loyalists will hesitate for long enough for him to build up a full majority. If anyone should choose to strike back… well, he can strike at them, now. With the most royal of methods. And if Eloiza succeeds in her endeavour to win over at least _some _of the guilds, that might as well buy him impunity.

When he reaches the Public Palace, many turn – or rather, everyone does. Whether it's expectation or knowledge of his deed, their eyes are on him, and he doesn't mind the weight of their gaze. Larthia herself waits at the top of the stairs, her bejewelled hands joined together below her stomach. Their eyes meet and, though Nicola isn’t sure of what he’s reading in hers, she nonetheless gives him a nod.

Then she turns towards the hall’s entrance and claps her hands, summoning the attention of all those who are lounging about in their black senator cloaks. « Come, come », her high-pitched voice calls. « Session is opening, ladies and gentlemen! »

The assembly is silently tense. There’s an anticipation, a coiled wait.

Nicola walks to the tribune, his hands to either side of the wooden parapet, and looks to his left, to his right, and ahead of him, at the men and women who sit in his government.

He smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> For my recipient: hi, I hope you liked this! I was very undecided on just how dark I should go, since you had no notes and no letter to your sign up, so I tried my best with this and kinda decided to mix and match two prompts (the sent-to-kill-him and the in-his-employ parts). It's been fun writing it!


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